


Positron

by Amand_r



Category: Torchwood RPF
Genre: Gen, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-05-03
Updated: 2011-05-03
Packaged: 2017-10-18 22:49:48
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,470
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/194150
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Amand_r/pseuds/Amand_r
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Kai shrugs.  He's not as comfortable with the whole dissing of fangirls, probably because one of them didn't grab his arse at the bar last night or ask him what it's like to have intimate scenes with John Barrowman for the millionth time in the elevator this afternoon.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Positron

**Author's Note:**

  * For [neifile7](https://archiveofourown.org/users/neifile7/gifts).



> For neifile7, a great beta. Happy holidays, lady. (Thanks to cruentum for vomiting his beta sparkle all over this.)

Gareth hates these fucking things. He's not a writer. Well, okay he is, but not this shit. This shit is fandom crap, Torchwood parody and then a fake kiss with whatever arsehole they get to show up. With his luck it'll be Tom, though he wished that Daniela had stuck around, though she probably wouldn't let him snog her, and anyway, that's not what the fans want. They want guys locking mouths, soft-core porn on stage with two dicks, and they're not picky about what dicks, actually.

If someone doesn't show he'll get that inflatable sex doll Clarky brought as a joke, the one with the plastic cock, and make out with it. Call it 'Owen' or something. Captain Jock Cockness.

He writes that on the blank paper, has to go back and add the second 'c' in 'cock'; that what he gets for going too fast. And maybe one too many beers with lunch.

Gemma's in the shower, and he's in the lounge portion of the suite. They'd told the hotel that they'd not wanted maid service, not since some fans at Gally had stolen a cart and got into their rooms to make off with some of his shorts, which had never ended up on eBay (He doesn't even want to know, he doesn't.). Gemma had laughed then, but he'd known she was angry, especially since instead of letting him go commando she'd gone out to an Old Navy and bought him some cheap replacements.

He's supposed to be re-writing this skit. The bloke who wrote it did it for him and Marsters and John, though he made changes after John's people did the predictable thing and never confirmed. The night they'd got there and Gaz had been told about Marsters skiving off, he'd had a few shots and a few beers, and then he and Gemma had got on the net and tried to order a bottle of tequila to James's house, but apparently in the US they watched alcohol movement like a hawk, which was a shame, because Gaz had writ him a poem to go in the gift card ("Roses are red, and we miss you, I know that you're faking, you little cunt. Love, Gareth.").

So he's been scratching out lines and erasing his scratches. He doesn't like the whole actors playing other actors playing characters thing. This isn't fucking Twelfth Night or something. Maybe he could think of something if he had more time, but this blows.

The phone rings and he can barely pick it up. It's been so long since he's had to actually pick up a receiver, the cord is like an animated garrote as he brings it around over his shoulder to answer it.

"Yup," he says into the phone.

" _Bukiak_ ," a familiar voice says, "get your arse up here. I'm in hiding!"

He almost fumbles the phone, dropping it. "Kai?"

"Aye, you daft bitch, get up to room three oh oh seven. I'm not allowed out until later!"

" _Bukiak_?"

"The Sopranos is on the telly."

Gareth eyes the coils of steam coming from the ensuite in the other room. "I'll be right up."

***

Gemma doesn't want to come up, she says when he sticks his head into the shower to tell her where he's going and also to look at her for a sec. You know, tits. She says that she'll see Kai later and that she has about three million girl things to do anyway—plucking, shaving, waxing, sandblasting, spackling, whatever. It makes her gorgeous and she's been doing it longer than he's known her; he has his own routines and if this is her way of maintaining order, he'll leave her to it.

He's willing to bet that after he leaves she turns on Top Gear and gets chicken fingers from room service.

He does that fun 'duck the handler' thing that's easy to do since it's not like they've posted guards or anything, and then he hums the Mission Impossible theme song under his breath while he waits for the elevator, hand clutching the rolled up script (because if Kai is here, then he's got to do this with him, no fucking way he can back out now, no fucking way), looking for fangirls around every corner, little squealing landmines. The ones that bother him the most are the quiet ones, the ones that will ride in an elevator fifteen levels and not say a word, but their eyes won't leave his face. Or his crotch. It's the silence that's unnerving.

They must all be somewhere else, at lunch or out in Birmingham, or hiding in the bar, because he doesn't encounter a single one, which is a shame, because he had this whole 'dive, roll and crouch' thing planned, that he can only do when no one is with him because everyone he knows will make fun of him, except John, who would probably _sing_ the Mission Impossible theme song while doing it with him, and make a finger gun, too. Gareth happily admits that he's a nerd in some ways, but John, John is a geek.

Room 3007 is one of the monster suites—he and Gemma only have the nice-nice one—so they must have really sprung to get Kai here. Either that, or this was the Marsters suite. Or the Barrowman suite. Gareth sighs. It's not like he cares. He'd take a double bed with no lounge if it meant that they'd cover his bar tab.

He knocks and the door cracks for a split second before the eye widens and the door widens even more, and he's pulled in, arm first, like a cartoon character sucked into a fan. It must have been funny to see from the hallway.

Kai slams the door and turns. "I'm not supposed to be here yet. Or at all."

Gareth peruses the room. Posh. Giant flatscreen telly, tuned to, yup, the Sopranos. Bottles and bottles open on the table, a pizza box. They got him pizza? Oh, now he is jealous.

They exchange the tentative man hug, do the how's your girl? She's good yeah yeah bit. Kai laughs that Gemma is there, wants to hang with Clarky, later, yeah, they're all going to get pissed and then go to the con party. Gareth tells him about the mechanical sheep and they have a laugh, next thing he knows they're sitting on the sofa, beers in hand, doing the sprawl, hands loosely clutching the skit papers, but really they're watching two inept mutherfuckers try to put a hit on Christopher and gunfire fills the room.

Gareth can feel his eyes glaze, he's not seeing the telly anymore, just a blur. "HBO is the shit."

Kai stretches. "We should make a show about the mafia."

Gareth glances at him. "The Welsh Mafia."

Kai winks. " _Cymraeg Hysbeiliwr_ , mutherfucker." He makes a C with his hand, like a gang sign. "Conwy represent."

They snort into their beer. The credits roll on the episode and Kai empties his beer, gets another one, and picks up the script. "This is shite."

"It's a con sketch."

"We should do a scene from something else," Kai says, ever the professional. Little frown as he tries to read the text and talk at the same time. The curtains are closed and the light is waning. Why they're closed is a mystery; it's not as if someone will see through the windows and realise OMG KAI IS HERE OMG. "Do you know any Beckett? Shakespeare?" He grins. "That bloke who wrote _Deep Throat_?"

Gareth gives him the V. "Look, we just have to be hyper, a little silly, talk into the microphones too close so that no one can understand us, and then snog at the end." He shrugged. "Works every time. They laugh anyway."

Kai shrugs. He's not as comfortable with the whole dissing of fangirls, probably because one of them didn't grab his arse at the bar last night or ask him what it's like to have intimate scenes with John Barrowman for the millionth time in the elevator this afternoon. All that said, Gareth realises as he checks out his chicken scratch in the margins, he really does love going to cons. He loves the interaction, the girls, the drinking. He likes the nerdiness. Maybe if he only did two a year he'd be less burnt out on the giggling and questions like, "What's your favorite cheese?" The next time he's going to say he's lactose intolerant.

"Yeah, okay," Kai says. "We should combine this third person and cut them out, otherwise it'll be confusing…"

***

For all that Kai makes fun of him for being tired, when Gareth opens his eyes and blearily glances at the clock–7:30—Kai is asleep next to him, one of the pages wedged under his face against the back of the sofa. Gareth sighs and sits forward. Kai comes awake with a start and looks around, as if he is startled to find himself there. Gareth can sympathise. One morning at Dragon*Con this year he came awake with a start on the bathroom floor, toilet paper stuck to his face, and couldn't even remember what city he was in for the five minutes it took him to get ambulatory.

"Shit," Kai says, rubbing his face. "When is this thing?"

Gareth can't remember whether it's supposed to be eight or eight thirty, though if it had been the first one, surely a handler would have been up here banging on the door. He checks his phone in his back pocket to see why Gemma hadn't called or texted him, and oops, the battery is dead. She's probably livid. Well, it wasn't as if she didn't know where he was going. Maybe there's a Top Gear marathon on the telly and she's distracted.

But he's hungry and tired, and he has a long night of social drinking ahead of him, so he groans and leans forward, eyeing the amended script that is proof that they are neither of them ever meant to actually write for film or stage. It will have to do.

Kai is on the phone to the organisers, it's at eight-thirty, yeah, and sure they'll have supper quickly before they get to the show and do the skit, and then it's straight onward until morning. He wants to use the room phone to ring Gemma, but he doesn't remember the number. 5007? 698? Who the fuck knows.

Gareth uses the loo and tries to mash down his hair, Kai is humming something under his breath, Oasis a-fucking-gain, then he mutters something about songs being stuck in your head. They decide they're going to do that surprise entrance with Kai singing 'Hymns and Arias', because they go apeshit for that song, like they always do for 'Dance Magic', the way Gareth thinks that aside from snogging men and singing David Bowie he's becoming a one trick pony (oh god, ponies).

On the way out they have to find Kai's keys, and there they are still in the little envelope under the pizza box. Gareth drinks the last of the flat beer in his bottle (it might have been Kai's), and they head out the door, though right before they get the lights, Kai stops him, grabs the scripts and folds them, stuffing his in his back pocket. Wouldn't do to forget those—they didn't bother to memorise.

"We never did practice that thing," Kai says. "Just wanna wing it, yeah?"

Gareth knows that Kai isn't nervous about it—it’s a kiss at a con, for god's sake—but it's more like he wants to be sure that they're okay with it, they're cool. Because they're dudes and well, yeah. It's a tightrope he never had to walk with John because John is gay and married and Gareth is straight and engaged and he always told himself that kissing John was in some ways like kissing an off limits female co-star, a female co-star with giant man hands and a prick. So okay, he likes to be deluded.

But he's straight, and Kai is straight, so it's like sticking two magnets together on the negative sides, or the positive side: you can force them, but there will always be a molecular buffer as they push against each other.

John's a magnet, too, but his is coated with glue, so everything sticks to it, regardless of charge.

He grabs Kai's head with both hands and presses his lips against his, and he's a little shocked when Kai opens his mouth, because they don't have to do that, and they can totally fake it by turning away from the front, aligning their faces so that they look like they're lip-locking and no one is the wiser. Kai's not dumb, he knows about stage kissing, so Gareth just reaches one hand up and goes with it, with the smell and the roughness of Kai's stubble and the general warmth of it, and it feels strange, yeah, because this is the first straight man he's ever kissed, and they go at it for a few seconds, like men looking for something.

Kai's tongue finds his and they touch. Kai tastes like mouthwash and beer under that, and that's fantastic, really, what Gareth always imagined he tastes like to Gemma or any of the other girls (sink!girl, that's what he calls her, because he was so drunk he can't even remember her face. Funny how a moment of indiscretion gets blown up on the internet and something you might have otherwise never remembered becomes an obsession. Someday he wants to remember the face of the girl who almost ruined his future marriage.).

Kai makes a grunting noise and it might be a moan, but it reminds them both that they are kissing and straight, but Gareth decides, oh hell, in for it, and it's nice, and they'll never speak of or do it again, so he grabs the back of Kai's head and drives further into his mouth, pulling back at last with Kai's lower lip in between his teeth before letting go and pressing his forehead to Kai's. Okay, that was a special moment.

 _One last Torchwood moment,_ he keeps telling himself, but the 'last Torchwood moment' just keeps coming.

Maybe he should stop doing cons, even if he does need the money. Gemma would be happy. Hell, his straight dick would be happy.

"Shit, we need a few shots," Kai says, wiping his mouth with his hand for show. His hand misses the door handle and he has to look to find it.

" _Cymraeg Hysbeiliwr_ , mutherfucker," Gareth says, following him from the room, and Kai does the C gesture over his shoulder without looking back.

Gareth doesn't wipe his mouth. He doesn't need to.

END


End file.
